A NEW YEARS PRAYER

Mixed Media – Found Steel Truss, Ojai-Grown Valencia Oranges
Creekbed, Jesusita Trail, Santa Barbara, CA
Lunar New Year 2014

This was a long-imagined piece. Dormant and gestating for over a decade. Awaiting the time when energy and hope, and love reentered. A creek bed repeatedly visited over a lifetime. A solitary and barren orange tree at the top of a series of natural spillways. Memories of when she bore fruit (before she was damaged, cut, and left barren to grow thorns for protection) and sent her offspring down the river to find their place. The trussed pole having long ago fallen into and becoming lodged into the bed, becomes the catch – wide at one end, narrow and pointed at its downhill apex. Like an ancient Egyptian’s fishing basket, the oranges enter and are held until the artist removes them and processes them into something nourishing – the sugar and Vitamin C becoming the “juice” to propel us forward and to ingest, with gratitude for the abundance before us … and to come.